oldbroad, the extras are: Plus all winners will receive from J. Allen Williams, a link to download a set of 8 HD computer desktop images and both versions of the DarkStar Strategy Guide (one is full color and illustrated, the other is b/w printer-friendly).

MAGS = Motorized Automated Girl for SIMON(SIMON is the "male" robot who made MAGS)

"The addition of MAGS to DARKSTAR occurred very late in production, but the concept lived for several years in the mind of the Director's 10 year-old daughter Maggie. After much persuasion and a pile of submitted crayon drawings, Maggie's concept was added and became a favorite character of everyone involved. Not only did she design the robot, she voiced it as well ..."

MAGS: "There are so many cookies in my in-box, I've got to empty my cache hourly...goes right to my thighs, you know."

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"Dragons were never gone. They were just invisible and very, very quiet." ~ M'aiq the Liar (Skyrim)

Took time to install the game on my desktop this afternoon. I know why they call it an interactive movie: there were a lot of .mov files to install! It took quite awhile. Then I had to install QuickTime and download an update for it too, which also took some time.

I watched the prologue and tried to explore some, get a feel for the controls. This is a QuickTime game; it makes extensive use of the QT viewer. The game itself plays in a window surrounded by a border-like interface. The game viewing area seems to be about half the size of my screen. You can change the levels of three sound types: dialogue, music, sound effects. But there doesn't appear to be any way to tweak the graphics settings. There is a zoom in/out function for getting a closer look at certain things in the game.

The character movement and graphic changes were noticeably slow for me. I have a fairly decent computer (with/Win7), so this doesn't bode well for people trying to play the game on an moderate or lesser computer. I didn't experience any glitches or jerky cursor jumps--just slow response and movements.

The game is a mix of 1st person and 3rd, with the interactive part being done in 1st person view. The graphics are good. The game has atmospheric sounds and music. It's interesting to watch the main character respond to some of the actions you take. You really do need to just kick back and watch the show every now and then, but you can also click out of cut scenes if you want.

The story sets up an intriguing beginning, with a definite hint of villainy. I feel kind of lost as to what I'm suppose to do first here, but that's about par for adventure games! So my plan is to fall back on Rule #1: Explore. The game also comes with a very good walkthrough. Oh, and I did read that you can die, but not sure about the particulars on that ... yet.

Well, there you go. My first impressions of Darkstar. Thanks again to GameBoomers, J. Allen Williams and Parallax Studios. This is an unusual game that promises some solid entertainment!

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"Dragons were never gone. They were just invisible and very, very quiet." ~ M'aiq the Liar (Skyrim)